


Running from Ghosts

by Silex



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Angst, Flash Fic, Gen, Post-Canon, coping with loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 15:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17748482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: There are times when Chris doesn't know why he keeps going and there are times when he does.





	Running from Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveandthetruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/gifts).



Chris had wanted to get away from it all, take time to figure things out, decide if he wanted to finally retire.

But the time was never there for the taking.

One thing after another after another would happen, a new threat, another outbreak.

Another loss.

His whole career had been defined by it.

From the start with S.T.A.R.S., to what happened with Jill – losing her and then saving her, only to lose her again to forced retirement.

Even killing Wesker had been a loss, the death of a hated enemy, the end of a constant threat.

The victory had been hollow, Wesker was dead, but the threat he represented lived on.

Bioterrorism remained, but Chris no longer had a name, a face, a single focus for his hatred, his striving.

The game went on, but the goalposts hadn’t just been moved, they’d been removed entirely leaving no endpoint.

He’d lost his team in Edonia to the nebulous threat.

No time to recover, no time to process it so he’d made time.

He ran away and found…

Nothing.

Without the BSAA he had nothing but time.

Time where he had too much to think about, until Piers found him and the losses continued.

His team again, but at least, fleetingly, he’d had a name to pin it on. Ada Wong, except it hadn’t been.

Leon, Sherry, even Claire had tried to explain it to him afterwards, but he hadn’t listened, hadn’t tried to.

He was back in action, out of the retirement he’d never taken, back in the BSAA.

He said all the right things, did all the right things, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Neither was his head.

When there was nothing else to think about, late at night when the danger was gone, the mission was over, he was back in Lanshiang, back in the NeoUmbrella base.

Back with Piers.

What Piers had said.

What Piers had done.

He’d seen it, the conviction, recognized it because there had been a time he’d felt it, believed it wholeheartedly. It was what had driven him to cut all ties and pursue Wesker after Raccoon City, with near disastrous results for those he cared about.

Things had been bad, but they could have been so much worse.

That was what Piers had reminded him of.

And that was what he tried to remember about Piers, his sacrifice and why he’d done it all.

So when he was asked about it, as was routine, he’d told nothing but the truth.

That Piers had died to save not just him, but all of humanity, that his sacrifice had been a last act of desperate bravery to stop HAOS. He’d done it for the BSAA, for the future.

He just left out the exact nature of Piers’ sacrifice, that when he died he was no longer human.

Why ruin the legacy of such a remarkable, devoted young man, the kind of man that Chris wished he could have been, whished he was, by turning him into a hypocrite?

Piers’ cause had been the right one, desperate measures taken in the most desperate of times.

It was just that Chris just couldn’t shake the thought that Piers deserved better than to simply be remembered as a hero, one who’d made the ultimate sacrifice.

The young man deserved to be alive.

If things had gone differently, if their situations had been reversed, Chris wondered if he would have been brave enough to make the same choice.

The right choice.

Would he have been able to take the needle and willingly give up his humanity to hold onto his ideals?

Did he even still have ideals?

He’d tried to, his reaction to what Piers had done had proved that, trying to convince the Lieutenant to come with him, to force him to live as a monster.

Just because he’d been afraid of yet another loss.

So he was back in the BSAA, doing the right thing, not because he wanted to, but because Piers wasn’t alive to do it for him.

He had to keep going, be the hero people expected him to be.

Otherwise all that loss would be in vain.


End file.
